METAIRIE, La.  Their paths first crossed in Chino, Calif. Ed Orgeron was the recruiting coordinator for Southern California and he liked this young defensive tackle named Sedrick Ellis, who also played offensive line and was a shot-putter on the track team.

"He was a little undersized," Orgeron recollects on the New Orleans Saints' steamy practice field. "He had tremendous get-off. He wasn't like a five-star recruit but there were a lot of things we liked."

Ellis enjoyed meeting the peppery Orgeron and opted to play at Southern Cal but there were reasons other than the recruiting pitch.

"I don't think it was so much him that convinced me to go there. SC is a great place and they have great coaching and always have," says Ellis, the Saints No. 1 pick. "I noticed they were on their way up when I was coming in and I wanted to be part of that."

The Trojans won national championships in 2003 and 2004 and Ellis was a unanimous All-American choice following the 2007 season. Orgeron had moved on by then to coach at the University of Mississippi and joined the Saints in the spring as defensive line coach.

Any idea whom he might have touted for the Saints' top pick?

"The draft? That was a no-brainer," Oregeron says. "He's a great player who played hard every down with great technique. I just vouched for his character and work ethic."

Ellis, now 6-1 and 307 pounds, is not the player Orgeron remembered. He's more.

"He was a strong player but he benches 510 now and that's off the charts. But I was really surprised by his quickness. He was a lot quicker than I remembered at SC. His lower body strength and his flexibility was better than I remembered," Orgeron says.

Ellis spent five years with the Trojans, redshirting in 2003 and becoming a starter in '05. Bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, he enjoys surprising Orgeron with what he has learned.

"I'm different," he says. "I'm smarter than when he first got ahold of me and I was kind of raw. I've grown up an awful lot since he last coached me. I think his perceptions of me are changing, that he realizes that I'm not 17 anymore and that I've been doing this for a while."

Ellis will start at defensive tackle for the Saints, who desperately want to get more of a pop from their front four to take some pressure off a rebuilding secondary.

They've got solid ends in Will Smith, Charles Grant and free-agent Bobby McCray and a firm presence in defensive tackle Brian Young. If Ellis can just add a little push, the Saints may find that missing pressure. They had only 32 sacks last year and their defense ranked 26th in the NFL.

"We got Sed and Bobby and they give us a lot of depth and versatility and we're excited about that. And coach Orgeron is a pass-rushing coach so he's teaching us a lot more stuff and we've had a lot more pressure in these recent practices than we had in years before," Smith says.

Ellis, he says, is "very explosive. Smart player. Very coachable. Very nice guy. We think he's going to have a big year."

He has also impressed linebacker Jonathan Vilma, a former No. 1 pick acquired in trade from the New York Jets.

"I see a very talented player, a very athletic guy," Vilma says. "He has a great attitude, a great personality. The guy just comes in and wants to go to work. He can play the one technique (nose tackle) or the three technique (upfield tackle) — he has the ability to do both and he's strong enough to do both — and I just see great things coming from him."

Orgeron has coached for 25 years but never before in the NFL. In that sense, he and Ellis are going through the rookie rigors together.

"He's new to the NFL and I'm new to the NFL," Ellis says. "And we're kind of learning things together."

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